Palestinian leader Arafat dies at 75
State funeral to be held in Cairo
Thursday, November 11, 2004

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, 75, the leader who passionately sought a homeland for his people but was seen by many Israelis as a ruthless terrorist and a roadblock to peace, died early Thursday in Paris.

"The last two days were very painful, very difficult days," said chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat, who confirmed Arafat's death Thursday morning. "And now, after these painful days of President Arafat, he is dead."

The speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Rawhi Fattuh, will be sworn in as Palestinian Authority president on an interim basis at noon (5 a.m. ET), according to Palestinian officials.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Sha'ath said Fattuh's first order of duty will be to "declare free and open public elections within 60 days."

As expected, former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has been elected chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization following an anonymous vote by the PLO executive committee, according to Palestinian officials.

Arafat had been sick with an unknown illness that had been variously described as the flu, a stomach virus or gallstones.

He flew to Paris October 29 seeking medical treatment and was hospitalized with what Palestinian officials said was a blood disorder.

He had been on a respirator since slipping into a coma November 3.

A hospital spokesman said he died at 3:30 a.m. Thursday (9:30 p.m. Wednesday ET).

Arafat's body will be taken from France to Cairo, where the Egyptian government will host a state funeral for him on Friday, Erakat said.

He will be buried outside the Palestinian Authority headquarters compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israel has ordered a general closure of the West Bank and Gaza, according to the Israel Defense Forces, as the region prepares for the burial.

Arafat's family had wanted him buried in Jerusalem, but the Israeli government forbade that.

"Jerusalem is the city where Jewish kings are buried, and not Arab terrorists," Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said last week.

Erakat vowed that the grave in Ramallah would be temporary.

"One day, we will have our own independent state with east Jerusalem as its capital," he said.

Erakat called it "heartbreaking" that Arafat died before achieving his goal of an independent Palestinian state, "and the Israeli occupation of our land has not finished yet." But he said Arafat managed to preserve Palestinian national identity during decades without statehood.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns will officially represent the United States at Arafat's funeral, a senior State Department official told CNN.

Other U.S. officials may attend as private citizens, but not as government representatives, the source said.

For five decades, Arafat -- adorned with his trademark checkered kaffiyeh -- was the most prominent face of Palestinian opposition to Israel and the push for a Palestinian state, first as the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which carried out attacks against Israeli targets, and later as the leader of the quasi-governmental Palestinian Authority after parts of the West Bank and Gaza were returned to Palestinian control.

His death leaves no clear immediate successor in the often fractious world of Palestinian politics.

During Arafat's illness, Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei has been in charge of the Palestinian Authority, while former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has led the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee.

The president holds office for five years and can stand for re-election once.

Arafat was first elected head of the PLO in 1969, and by 1974, Arab leaders recognized the group as "the sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people.

In 1994, Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, for their work on the Oslo accords, seen at the time as a breakthrough toward an independent Palestinian state and a permanent peace with Israel. Yet a decade later, Arafat died without seeing his dream of a Palestinian homeland come true.

At a summit at Camp David, Maryland, in 2000, Arafat decided to turn down a U.S.-brokered deal offering Palestinians control of most of the occupied Palestinian territory. Three months later, intense fighting broke out between Palestinians and the Israeli army.

Expressing his condolences in a statement, former U.S. President Bill Clinton said: "I regret that in 2000 he missed the opportunity to bring that nation into being and pray for the day when the dreams of the Palestinian people for a state and a better life will be realized."

After taking office in 2001, President Bush refused to meet with Arafat and insisted that reform and new leadership within the Palestinian Authority were prerequisites for the creation of an independent state.

In a statement, Bush called Arafat's death "a significant moment in Palestinian history."

"We express our condolences to the Palestinian people," he said. "We hope that the future will bring peace and the fulfillment of their aspirations for an independent, democratic Palestine that is at peace with its neighbors."

Israel -- in retaliation for increased terrorist attacks on Israeli civilian targets -- severely restricted Arafat's movements, confining him to his West Bank compound in Ramallah in December 2001.

Continuing violence, along with corruption and economic problems, raised questions at home and abroad about Arafat's ability to lead the Palestinian Authority.

In 2003, under pressure from the United States and members of his own Cabinet, Arafat appointed Abbas to the new position of prime minister, a move designed to decentralize power.

But Abbas resigned less than six months later, saying he didn't have enough support to do the job.

In July, Arafat announced a program designed to unify security forces and tackle corruption after his frustrated second prime minister, Qorei, also tried to resign.

Arafat is survived by his wife, Suha Tawil, whom he married in 1991, and their daughter, Zahwa, who was born in 1995.

*****

Arafat's personal doctor calls for autopsy 

CAIRO, Nov 11 (AFP) - The personal physician of Yasser Arafat called for an inquiry into the cause of the veteran Palestinian leader's death on Thursday. 

"I demand an official inquiry and an autopsy ... so the Palestinian people can learn in all transparency what caused the death" of their leader, Dr Ashraf al-Kurdi said on Al-Jazeera television only hours before Arafat was due to be buried. 

He said his suspicions were aroused by the absence of any information about Arafat's health since he was admitted to hospital in Paris on October 29 and that Arafat was conscious when he left his Ramallah compound. 

Amid the doubt, rumours have surfaced that Arafat was poisoned but doctors in Paris and Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath rejected that speculation. 

Kurdi, who was Arafat's personal physician for more than 20 years, said he had been surprised by the actions of some members of the veteran leader's office. 

He said they took too long to contact him even though Arafat's health was in rapid decline. 

Kurdi, who did not travel to Paris his patient, said he could not draw any conclusions about the death despite his suspicions. 

*****

Secrecy surrounds diagnosis 
By Elisabeth Rosenthal International Herald Tribune 
Friday, November 12, 2004

PARIS Even after Yasser Arafat's death Thursday morning, French health officials continued their stony silence about exactly what disease killed the Palestinian leader. And so, the man who lived so much of his life simply and in the public eye, died mysteriously, surrounded by secrecy. 

After two weeks, the medical databases at Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart must be crammed with information about Arafat's condition - scans, biopsies, reams of blood test results - that would have defined for doctors within minutes the condition of Arafat's kidneys, liver and lungs. But these remain top secret.

The hospital officially announced Arafat's death in a terse statement delivered by the hospital spokesman, General Christian Estripeau, who told reporters there would be no details released on tests, the cause of death or whether there would be an autopsy. When reached by telephone later on Thursday, Estripeau said there would be "no information." 

In fact, all the information about Arafat's sudden death that has dribbled out comes from his Palestinian aides, who provide facts through a non-medical and highly politicized filter. These few misshapen puzzle pieces are insufficient to create a picture of what went wrong.

As their beloved leader deteriorated in the past two days, Arafat's aides announced only that he was in a deep coma on life-support machines, having suffered a brain hemorrhage - a stroke caused by bleeding into the brain. But such a fatal event can have many underlying causes, and does not explain why Arafat's health had deteriorated so precipitously in the past month.

In France, a patient or the next-of-kin must give permission for doctors to release information. In his carefully worded statements, Estripeau suggested that this permission was not given: "It is not up to the defense forces' health services to reveal information given to the family," he said today. 

Strokes are generally sudden affairs, and Arafat's was almost certainly a secondary result of his underlying and undisclosed illness. At the time of his medical evacuation to Paris two weeks ago, aides revealed that he was suffering from a low platelet count and had undergone a platelet transfusion. Since platelets are involved in blood clotting, patients with low platelet counts are predisposed to brain hemorrhages, and this may have contributed to Arafat's death.

But low platelet counts in the blood are a common finding in a wide range of illnesses, including severe infections, liver disease, end-stage cancer, and even AIDS. And doctors made no mention of a hemorrhage until Wednesday, suggesting that it was a recent event. 

On Nov. 4, doctors and aides announced that Arafat was being transferred to the intensive care unit because his condition had deteriorated. No mention of a brain hemorrhage was made at that time, although such bleeding would have been immediately obvious on a CAT scan. 

It is accepted medical practice throughout the world that patients or their families have the right to keep medical information private. In France, politicians and celebrities frequently keep their medical lives secret, but in many countries, such as the United States, public figures are expected to reveal private health information and hospitals tend to encourage it. 

"There can be tension between what the public would like to know and what the family feels comfortable talking about, but our policy is that the privacy of the patient and the patient's family comes first and is paramount," said Myrna Manners, spokesperson for the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, which has treated many world leaders including the Shah of Iran. 

But, she added: "Rather than have rumors or speculation run amok, we feel its better to have a clear process and a bit of information. We encourage that." 

There are various reasons why Arafat's inner circle would want to keep the cause of his death a secret. Perhaps he suffered from a disease that they considered embarrassing. Or perhaps the doctors who treated him during the early phases of his illness in Ramallah missed a treatable medical condition, letting him deteriorate to the point it was too late to cure him once he was moved to Paris. 

In the end, the actual timing of his death - like in much of his life - was probably tinged with a hefty dose of politics and religion.

At some point after he was transferred to intensive care, Arafat was placed on a ventilator, a machine that assists in breathing. Such assistance can be required because of lung problems - like pneumonia - or in cases where the brain-centers that control breathing are not functioning properly. Both deep comas and large strokes can damage these centers temporarily and require that a patient be placed on a machine. 

Once a patient's breathing is maintained by a ventilator, the exact timing of death often becomes something of a matter of choice. More important, it also becomes subject to religious variations concerning the ethics of caring for terminally ill patients. 

Islamic scholars have generally prohibited the discontinuation of life support machines, since the Koran advises: "Don't throw yourself into death." Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, reacted violently to press reports yesterday that Palestinian officials had arrived in Paris to "pull the plug" on Arafat. 

"We don't accept euthanasia," he said, Arafat "is in the hands of God." 

But in France, as in much of the world, death is now defined by the death of the brain, or "brain death." A patient on a ventilator can be breathing and have a pumping heart- at least for some time - even though he is medically and legally dead. 

Many Islamic scholars say that a patient can be disconnected from life support once he is brain dead, since he is no longer really alive. But some conservative Muslim groups, as well as many conservative Jews, still maintain that the person lives so long as the heart is beating. 

It is not known if Arafat was removed from life-support machines or if his heart stopped beating while he was still on them.